Best rice cooker I've used
This is my first time purchasing a Cuckoo rice cooker and I'm extremely impressed. There are some minor caveats/things to bear in mind when you buy this, but TL;DR: this is a solid rice cooker and I haven't made better rice with any other rice cooker. First, the design is sleak -- the back w/ rose gold goes well with most of our appliances, and adds a nice bit of accent color to the kitchen. My only complaint about the external design is how thin some of the platic feels to the touch. This doesn't 'feel' like a product in its price point; it feels much cheaper. I could imagine this breaking irreparably if dropped. The built-in voices are fun -- being greeted with a little jingle and hearing a voice notify me of each stage of the cooking process is really nice, in spite of being more of a 'fun' thing than a practical one. The voice is in multiple languages, and can be disabled entirely. Again, a bit over-the-top, but it has its function of offering me the freedom to work about the kitchen without constantly checking the rice cooker. This particular rice cooker is non-stick while avoiding the use of teflon. I do not have burnt rice stuck on the bottom of the bowl -- instead, I get consistent rice to my liking from top to bottom, and I don't need to worry about chips of teflon in my food. It has a self-sanitizing feature, that will use hot water to sanitize itself. It should be noted the self-sanitizing is not self-cleaning. In other words, you still need to detach the various plates and components to sufficiently clean the unit. One should not rely on this feature alone to keep their rice cooker clean and in good condition. Speaking of components, there are multiple components that are detachable for cleaning purposes, specifically in the lid. This is a pressure rice cooker, and the various lids and steam filters need cleaning. This is fine and dandy, but the first plate in the lid really requires some strength. It is held in by a thick rubber gromet with a tiny rubber handle, which you can pull to remove the plate. The rubber handle is small and smooth, so people with big fingers/hands will struggle getting a decent grip on it, and people with smaller fingers and hand may struggle with the amount of force required to detach it. It is areas in the design like this and the plastic enclosure where cuckoo made clear design decisions to save on production costs. Luckily, none of these things detract from the quality of the product it yields. I have NEVER cooked better straight rice out of the rice cooker than I have with this. There are several cooking modes to choose from -- most folks will use the glutinous rice setting, which has 3 settings of its own - normal, high heat, and turbo. Normal mode will cook the rice in around 40 minutes High heat will cook the rice in about 30 Turbo will cook it in about 20 The quality degrades the higher power you use -- but not by much. The worst 'quality' rice I got was using the turbo setting for glutinous rice -- it was only slightly tougher than what I'd have preferred, but if I'm in a pinch for time, the turbo mode yields rice that is good enough. Normal mode seems to have the best yield, as the rice is evenly cooked from top to bottom. There are zero 'hard' pieces of rice, nor a collection of burnt rice on the bottom of the bowl, reducing waste. Each grain is soft and is as sticky as I want. It's important to note there are timed modes, as well as ways to customize each option's cook settings, so you can tweak the presets to suit your needs. All in all, this is one of the best cooking appliances I've purchased in awhile. Read more
